Tenn-e-Secrets
Murder or suicide on the Natchez Trace?
One Tennessee mystery may never be solved and its intrigue is enough to raise eyebrows still, 215 years later.
Meriwhther Lewis Memorial in Hohenwald. (Credit: National Parks Service)
Meriwether Lewis Credit: Charles Wilson Peale
Meriwether Lewis, a namesake of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery, died near Hohenwald in 1809. He was stressed out to the point of ”a state of mental derangement” when he arrived there on his way to Washington D.C. And his life was cut short by two bullet wounds, one above his breast, another to his skull. Those are the facts.
But was it suicide or murder? His mental state at the time will always draw questions about sucide. But motives from those near him that night draw suspicions for murder, too.
President Thomas Jefferson rewarded Lewis’ work with the Corps of Discovery by naming him Governor of the Northern Territory of Louisiana, which at the time included most of the Louisiana Purchase. But the bureaucracy of the job proved difficult for the military man and explorer. He found himself legally responsible for the area’s finances and struggled under its great debt.
Lewis left St. Louis for Washington to iron out the situation, choosing a Mississippi River route to New Orleans to begin the journey and the remainder by sea voyage. Exhausted by heat and fearing his personal papers could fall into the hands of the British, Lewis changed his mind at Memphis, deciding to complete the rest of the journey on land across Tennessee and Virginia.
Along the way, he stopped for a night at Grinder Stand, a house near present-day Hohenwald. The consensus of those at the house and those traveling with Lewis, was that worries of his debts had overtaken him and left him “deranged” as many explained the situation in letters.
Priscilla Grinder feared for her guest and stayed awake to listen as Lewis paced the floor “and talking aloud, as she said, ‘like a lawyer.’”
“She then heard the report of a pistol, and something fall heavily on the floor, and the words ‘O Lord!,’” according to her account presented by the Lewis County Museum. “Immediately afterwards she heard another pistol, and in a few minutes she heard him at her door calling out ‘O madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds.’’
“‘O madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds.’’ ”
She watched Lewis fall upon a stump in the yard but somehow drag himself back to his room. He survived for a time but was dead by morning.
But, really, Priscilla’s husband waited until the wee hours to kill Lewis for money. That’s one theory. Or, it was John Pernier, Lewis’ servant that killed him for the $240 he was owed. Or, Natchez Trace bandits killed Lewis. Or, James Wilkinson, the previous governor of the Louisiana Territory, killed Lewis to cover up his involvement in Aaron Burr’s conspiracy to break away the Natchez Trace territories from the U.S.
In 1848, a Tennessee state commission exhumed Lewis’ body, ensuring it was, indeed, him before they built a memorial to him on the site. That report found that he was most likely killed by an assassin.
The memorial that stands there today was finished in 2009. Its towering but broken shaft represents a life cut short.
